Attack of the Green-eyed Monster

Since I started this blog, I have waxed lyrical on everything from bizarre celebrity weddings to the plethora of traditions surrounding nuptials, along with producing many, MANY posts about my table centrepiece dilemmas. However, I have outlined very few of my own experiences. This is mainly because, as myself and D's wedding is some time away, I don't have much to talk about.

Apart from, that is, the trouble I've been having with an emotion I started to experience soon after I got engaged, which has caught me largely off guard: jealousy.

A jealous bride-to-be? Surely not! Yet it should come as little surprise that the thing making me feel like the Green-eyed Monster is the very same thing that has pushed me towards the edge of a stress-induced breakdown in the past few months. That is, other people's weddings. Admittedly, I've largely brought it on myself, as before I was ever engaged I vowed I would never read a wedding blog or magazine. This was very sage advice I should have stuck to.

As it is, I can't help but indulge in the odd glance and I often head immediately to the real-life wedding section. It is this that's my downfall. As I flick through picture after picture of meadows filled with tables covered in gingham, laughing people cavorting through a dressing up box and filling up on ice-cream from the van that has been hired especially for the day, I feel the envy start to bubble up. Looking at snaps of the couples posing on Portobello Road, larking about between the stalls (just to really rub it in that not only have they had a cool, London wedding, but they have also been shopping for vintage loveliness) I can feel myself tense with rage. Then there are those brides who get choppered into the ceremony, present each of the guests with a Faberge egg as a favour and spend their photoshoot frolicking in a cornfield wearing a pair of Louboutins - which would fill even a saint with unparalleled jealousy.

But just what is it that's making me envious? The Louboutins obviously, although I lack sympathy with anyone who would spend that much money on shoes only to traipse around a muddy field in them (and white satin is hardly the most hip of materials when it comes to ever wearing the heels again). But what else is causing the Green-eyed Monster to surface?

After all, it's not like they are all my dream wedding. Every one I read about is completely different from the last, ranging from shabby to city chic. And while I may wish I had some of the elements at my own wedding that I see in these pictures (an ice-cream van would be ace - just perhaps not in Manchester in February) - others are absolutely the last thing I would covet (any type of enforced fun, folk songs around the campfire, Cinderella-style carriages.)

Undoubtedly, reading all of these stories has made me stressed, reminding me of how much there is left to do and providing me with inspiration, thereby creating even more work for myself. But that's not what's prompting the envy.

Anyway, I've finally worked out what it is. There's one thing every single photo and account shares - shiny, happy joy. Every bride I look at or read about looks happy, gushing about it being the best day of her life. It doesn't matter whether they partied in a castle or on a barge, they're all happy because, after all that planning, they've finally had their big day.

So, it's the smiles I'm jealous of. I have 11 months to go until I experience that level of joy - and that leaves a lot of time to stress about whether or not to hire an ice-cream van for the reception.